Subhash K Jha looks back at the Luv Ranjan directed Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, which starred Kartik Aaryan as it celebrates 7 years!
I have known Kartik Aaryan from the time he was seen for the first time in Pyaar Ka Punchnama. Director Luv Ranjan had arranged a screening of the film for me. We were all there to watch what Ranjan (I can’t bring myself to call him Luv) described as a sock-in-the-guts film.
“Sir, aapko bahot achcha lagega. Especially watch out for that boy Kartik Tiwari (I think that’s what Kartik was initially known as). He will surprise you.”
Luv Ranjan, I knew from the time he assisted Suneel Darshan. It’s hard to believe Ranjan comes from Suneel Darshan’s school of filmmaking. To call them poles apart would be an insult to the pole. Just as calling Kartik a revelation would be an understatement. As Rajat “Rajjo” Kartik was sensational. He took over the screen in the way Rishi Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor did in Bobby and Refugee, respectively.
It took the hit Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety to strengthen Kartik’s position as a bankable star. Prior to Sonu Ke whatever, when I praised Kartik, the cynics in the film industry said, “He has Luv Ranjan to support him.”
Right. But Nushrat Bharucha also had Luv Ranjan to support her. By that reasoning, she should have been a superstar by now. Support or ‘sugar-daddy-ism’ doesn’t work if you don’t have it in you. Chetan Anand gave Priya Rajvansh classic after classic to showcase what he thought was her great talent. People remember Chetan Saab’s Hanste Zakhm and Haqeeqat. They would rather forget Ms Rajvansh (God bless her soul).
No actor can be thrust on the public. If the audience doesn’t connect with an actor, he or she is as good as gone from the onset. What worked in Kartik’s favour was the ‘IT’ factor that distinguishes the also-rans from the running-full on. Kids love him. Kids’ moms love him. Kids’ moms’ moms adore him too.
The repartees in Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety(SKTKS) just roll off the characters’ tongues, making them sound sassy and somber even when they are being mean and vicious just because it suits the script’s purposes. And God knows, this film needs no excuse to let the words flow. So, I give full marks to co-writers Rahul Mody and Luv Ranjan for investing in the vivacious proceedings with a verbal gusto that I found to be more sparkling in wit and insinuations than the dialogues in any recent film.
SKTKS is the story of the eponymous Titu (Sunny Singh, suitably equanimous), who is a bit of a rich, spoilt dullard. A mithaiwala’s son who falls in love with every human being in a skirt, the shorter, the better. It takes Titu’s BFF Sonu (Kartik Aryan) to rescue Titu from his disastrous relationship crises time after time.
At one point in the slyly silken storytelling, Kartik’s Sonu tells the manipulative gold digger a story of what he did to a boy in the classroom as a child when that boy troubled Titu. Clearly, this a bromance of extraordinary intensity, and Kartik and Sunny Singh, especially the former, play the brothers-born-from-different-mothers with a ferocious fidelity, never allowing gay insinuations to colour their camaraderie.
Luv Ranjan is very clear in his reading of ‘bromantic’ relationships. The woman is often a gold-digging manipulative, scheming bitch. Nushrat Bharucha plays the part with relish. It’s her ongoing game of one-upmanship with Kartik Aryan’s Sonu that gives a thundering heft to the plot, lifting even the sagging episodes (like the pre-marriage bachelor party in Amsterdam, which stretches into a blingy binge) to a zestful place filled with sexy sounds and seductive images of from privileged homes where no one has to bother about anything except the next holiday abroad.
Luv Ranjan is terrific at shooting family dynamics during festive times. Wedding-time negotiations, backbiting, and meal/alcohol consumption occupy a major part of the narrative. There is a compelling clarity to the way Ranjan pins down the inner workings of relationships in joint families about to come together through a marital alliance.
Of course, it helps that character actors from Alok Nath (abandoning his bovine image to play a wickedly irreverent grandfather) to Pritam Jaiswal (as an annoyingly efficient house help who is manipulated out of the household) add character to every scene they occupy. Indeed, this is not so much a triangle as a wreck-tangle, with every supporting actor egging on the central conflict among a two men who just can’t stop loving one another and a woman, who will tear them apart at any cost.
Sweety admits at one point that she is not the heroine but the villain. So does she get her hero, or does she get her comeuppance? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wink. Tongue lodged firmly in cheekiness, Luv Ranjan’s bromance-versus-romance tale has enough bite to make it one of the most invigorating rom-coms in recent times.
